For decades, police across the United States have been warned that the common tactic of handcuffing someone facedown could turn deadly if officers pin them on the ground with too much pressure or for too long.

Recommendations first made by major departments and police associations culminated in a 1995 federal safety bulletin that explained keeping someone on their chest in what’s known as prone restraint can dangerously restrict breathing. The solution: Once cuffed, turn them onto their side.

Yet today, what some officers are doing on the street conflicts with what has long been recognized as safe, a deadly disconnect that highlights ongoing failures in police training, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Cases involving prone restraint are among more than 1,000 AP documented over a decade of people who died not by gunshot but after officers used force that is not meant to kill. In all, at least 740 of these encounters involved prone restraint, making it the most prevalent tactic. It was also commonly misapplied.

Each state writes its own standards, and individual departments and training centers determine what officers hear in classrooms and gyms. The safest techniques don’t always filter down to officers.

What officers learn about the risks of prone restraint depends on geography.

Nearly all states have a Peace Officer Standards and Training agency that sets out what must be taught, so AP asked each commission whether it requires instruction on positional asphyxia, which happens when the chest can’t expand, starving the body of oxygen. Among the states that responded, 10 said they did not require positional asphyxia training and 20 states said they do include that training.

To understand what officers knew before deaths involving prone restraint, reporters scoured thousands of pages of interviews and depositions.

In nearly 100 cases, AP identified documents that showed whether officers had training in or otherwise knew the risk of positional asphyxia. In 80 deaths, at least one involved officer had been trained in or knew the potential dangers, though they did not always turn someone off their stomach promptly. Officers in another 14 deaths said they had no training and did not know the risks; could not recall training; or — in a few cases — were trained that prone position is safe.

Some officers repeated two common misconceptions that experts and trainers have long tried to dispel: That if someone can talk they can breathe, and that someone struggling for air is resisting arrest.

To speak, air must move across the vocal cords in the throat. To inhale oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, air must travel to and from the lungs. The short additional distance can be huge if someone is laboring to breathe.

“There’s a big difference between fighting the officers and fighting for breath,” said Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and national use-of-force expert who as a former officer and police trainer has written extensively about prone restraint.

California’s Legislature passed a 2021 law that said departments “shall not authorize techniques or transport methods that involve a substantial risk of positional asphyxia.” The legislation’s sponsor said he wanted to limit prone restraint. But the law hasn’t stopped some instructors at state-certified training centers from continuing to teach that holding someone facedown is a best practice.

Among the most senior instructors in California is David Rose, who in his 40 years as a trainer has taught thousands of officers that prone restraint is safe. Rose said he instructs officers to hold a person facedown with as little pressure as necessary, unless they are combative. He said the methods he teaches don’t run afoul of California’s law because prone restraint doesn’t carry a serious risk of positional asphyxia.

“Positional asphyxia doesn’t happen at all. In the field, it doesn’t happen,” Rose said in an interview at a regional training center in Sacramento.

“Putting weight on a person’s back in a prone position does not lead to them expiring unless it’s enough that it can actually squash them,” he said.

Rose bases his belief on studies produced by police-aligned lawyers, professors and experts who defend officers when they’re sued in court.

Officers almost always used prone restraint with other force, and within AP’s database medical officials cited prone position or asphyxia due to restraint as a cause or contributing factor in 61 of the 740 cases that involved the maneuver during the investigation’s 2012-2021 timeframe. In dozens of other cases, officers used prone restraint and “restraint” was cited as causing or contributing to the death, but prone position or restraint was not specified.

In many other cases, the cause of death focused on drugs or medical conditions instead of force. Due to the suppression of records, reporters were not always able to get the official determination.

AP contacted the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and asked whether Rose’s teachings on positional asphyxia align with state requirements. “POST is taking action and has notified the (Sacramento training) center that they are not compliant with the law. The issue will be remedied,” spokesperson Meagan Poulos wrote in an email Monday.

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Contributing to this story from the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland were Sean Mussenden and Mary Dalrymple.

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This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” which premiered April 30 on PBS and is available online. To view stories by journalists at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs, go here.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

For decades, police across the United States have been warned that the common tactic of handcuffing someone facedown could turn deadly if officers pin them on the ground with too much pressure or for too long.

Recommendations first made by major departments and police associations culminated in a 1995 federal safety bulletin that explained keeping someone on their chest in what’s known as prone restraint can dangerously restrict breathing. The solution: Once cuffed, turn them onto their side.

Yet today, what some officers are doing on the street conflicts with what has long been recognized as safe, a deadly disconnect that highlights ongoing failures in police training, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The cases involving prone restraint are among more than 1,000 AP documented over a decade of people who died not by gunshot but after officers used force that is not meant to kill. In all, at least 740 of these encounters involved prone restraint, making it the most prevalent tactic. It was also commonly misapplied.

In about half of the 740 cases, officers continued to pin someone down after handcuffing, often pressing with knees or hands when the person was controlled. That included people especially susceptible to the risks of prone restraint — those who were obese, impaired by drugs or had a medical condition.

Many people were held down longer than five minutes. In the extreme, at least 13 were down for 10 minutes or more — longer than George Floyd, whose 2020 death thrust policing back into the national conversation. Other cases involved police lying across, sitting or even standing on someone’s back.

Training that is ineffective, or that contradicts longstanding best practices, happens in part because policing in the U.S. lacks a national rulebook. The federal government’s 1995 guidance that warns against pressing someone down is just that — guidance, not the law.

Each state writes its own standards, and individual departments and training centers determine what officers hear in classrooms and gyms. The safest techniques don’t always filter down to officers.

In 2021, California became the rare state to pass a law limiting police tactics that could result in death due to the positioning of someone’s body. One intent was to limit the use of prone restraint. Yet AP found instructors at several state-certified training centers continue to teach — wrongly — that holding someone facedown doesn’t cause death by what’s known as positional asphyxia, which happens when the chest can’t expand, starving the body of oxygen.

That message traces back to a small group of police-aligned lawyers, physicians, experts and academics who authored studies they have used to defend officers facing wrongful death lawsuits. Experts who challenge this group in court say bad information is putting officers in a position of doing what they think is right, only to end up with a dead suspect and a court date.

“Body weight will restrict the ability to expand the chest, and they’ll die, and everybody knows it,” said Roger Clark, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s lieutenant who testifies about police policies and training in use-of-force cases, usually against officers.

Officers almost always used prone restraint with other force, and within AP’s database medical officials cited prone position or asphyxia due to restraint as a cause or contributing factor in 61 of the 740 cases that involved the maneuver during the investigation’s 2012-2021 timeframe. In dozens of other cases, officers used prone restraint and “restraint” was cited as causing or contributing to the death, but prone position or restraint was not specified.

In many other cases, the cause of death focused on drugs or medical conditions instead of force. Due to the suppression of records, reporters were not always able to get the official determination.

Some states said they require robust training. Since at least 2011, Georgia has mandated that officers learn how to safely restrain subjects facedown, according to the agency that oversees training. But officers in at least three Georgia deaths said they didn’t recall learning or were never taught the risks, according to AP’s investigation, done in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism and FRONTLINE (PBS).

One such death in Sylvester, a town surrounded by cotton fields and peanut farms, shows how quickly a person’s health can deteriorate when they are held down.

On an autumn night in 2016, Sgt. Adam Celinski responded to a 911 call about a paranoid man banging on the door of a woman’s home.

The man, Terrell “Al” Clark, told Celinski he was high on “powder” and needed help. Celinski’s body-camera video showed he was calm and courteous as he handcuffed the man. Clark also was polite, but neighbors watched as he began to struggle and the officer got Clark facedown on some roadside grass, using a knee and hand to ensure he stayed there.

The 47-year-old trucker had heart disease and was a heavy cocaine user, two risk factors Celinski couldn’t have seen. After a minute on the ground, Clark lost consciousness. Minutes later, he was dead. Clark’s girlfriend Bontressa Brown, seven months pregnant with his son, arrived after he was loaded into the ambulance.

In an interview, Celinski told AP that on that night he had not known holding someone facedown could be risky, and had safely used the technique his entire career.

While the Georgia Public Safety Training Center could not document exactly what Celinski was taught as a recruit in 2013, its leader of basic training told the AP that positional asphyxia was part of his curriculum, and instructors had to certify that graduates understood it. Told that, Celinski said positional asphyxia may have been discussed briefly during the 408-hour basic training course. Amid everything cadets must learn, he said, any lesson didn’t stick.

A medical examiner ruled Clark’s death an accident caused by cocaine and heart failure, and did not cite prone position. Celinski said he doesn’t believe the restraint contributed. Given subsequent training, Celinski said he now repositions suspects — and would have with Clark, to ensure he did everything right.

“I would have definitely done something differently,” Celinski, now a lieutenant with the Worth County Sheriff’s Office, said of Clark. “But I didn’t know.”

What officers learn about the risks of prone restraint depends on geography.

Nearly all states have a Peace Officer Standards and Training agency that sets out what must be taught, so AP asked each commission whether it requires instruction on positional asphyxia.

Among the states that responded, 10 said they did not require positional asphyxia training. Some of the 20 states that said they do include that training had deaths blamed at least in part on prone restraint, including Florida, Rhode Island and Georgia. Officers in all three states testified in lawsuits that they were not trained, or didn’t recall any training.

After Floyd’s death, lawmakers across the country introduced bills targeting prone restraint. While most failed, California passed a law intended to curtail its use, and legislatures in Pennsylvania and Colorado are considering measures.

California’s 2021 law said departments “shall not authorize techniques or transport methods that involve a substantial risk of positional asphyxia.” The legislation’s sponsor, Assemblymember Mike Gipson, said he wanted to limit prone restraint, because “it causes death.” The legislation does not include criminal penalties for violating it.

The California Police Chiefs Association opposed Gipson’s bill, writing that it would “remove tools needed to overcome dangerous individuals.” But the law hasn’t stopped some instructors at state-certified training centers in Northern California and Riverside County from continuing to teach that holding someone facedown is a best practice.

Among the most senior instructors in California is David Rose. In his 40 years as a trainer, Rose has taught thousands of officers that prone restraint is safe. His pupils take his teachings back to their departments as instructors and, in some cases, investigate deaths involving prone restraint.

Rose said he instructs officers to hold a person facedown with as little pressure as necessary, unless they are combative. He said the methods he teaches don’t run afoul of California’s law because prone restraint doesn’t carry a serious risk of positional asphyxia.

“Positional asphyxia doesn’t happen at all. In the field, it doesn’t happen,” Rose said in an interview at a regional training center in Sacramento.

“Putting weight on a person’s back in a prone position does not lead to them expiring unless it’s enough that it can actually squash them,” he said.

Placing someone on their stomach is not inherently life-threatening, and police use it every day without harming people. But AP’s investigation identified 44 cases where a medical examiner or coroner said prone restraint caused or contributed to the death, and another 17 which cited positional asphyxia or asphyxia due to restraint. Informed of this finding, Rose said he relies on the latest information he has gathered.

Rose bases his conclusions on several studies by experts with longstanding ties to law enforcement. The principal author of one such study is Darrell L. Ross, a criminal justice professor at Valdosta State University who has worked for decades in and around law enforcement, including as a prison guard and police trainer. Since 1988, Ross has been hired to defend officers as an expert witness, according to his biography, and has done so in dozens of cases.

For his study, Ross asked 17 law enforcement agencies in six states to collect data on arrests. Over a year, Ross wrote, the agencies reported officers used prone position in 1,085 “violent arrest incidents,” for about one to five minutes each time, and nobody died.

While he acknowledged the limitations of a study that relies on officers to self-report force, Ross said the results are significant. In an interview, he attributed deaths of people held facedown to drug use or other conditions, not prone restraint.

“I’m not going to say it can never happen,” Ross said. “I mean, that would be foolish, but I don’t think that has the compelling percentage or likelihood or even the statistical significance.”

Dr. Alon Steinberg, a cardiologist who has authored more recent studies that link deaths to prone restraint, is a leading voice against views like those of Ross. Steinberg said the Ross study is flawed because it includes too few departments and officers knew they were under scrutiny.

“Prone restraint has (been) shown to cause death,” Steinberg said. “What I’m worried about is the fact that people are dying because of it and the cops don’t know better.”

Soon after the AP shared its findings with Rose recently, the trainer wrote that he had just received one of Steinberg’s studies, and planned to add it to his lecture notes.

AP contacted the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and asked whether Rose's teachings on positional asphyxia align with state requirements. “POST is taking action and has notified the (Sacramento training) center that they are not compliant with the law. The issue will be remedied," spokesperson Meagan Poulos wrote in an email Monday.

What has become widespread agreement on the dangers of prone position began to coalesce about 30 years ago. That’s when agencies as diverse as the New York Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made videos warning about positional asphyxia. One major industry group, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, published a “training key” in 1993 that said prone position can kill.

To understand what officers knew before deaths involving prone restraint, reporters scoured thousands of pages of interviews and depositions.

In nearly 100 cases, AP identified documents that showed whether officers had training in or otherwise knew the risk of positional asphyxia. In 80 deaths, at least one involved officer had been trained in or knew the potential dangers, though they did not always turn someone off their stomach promptly. Officers in another 14 deaths said they had no training and did not know the risks; could not recall training; or — in a few cases — were trained that prone position is safe.

Some officers repeated two common misconceptions that experts and trainers have long tried to dispel: That if someone can talk they can breathe, and that someone struggling for air is resisting arrest.

To speak, air must move across the vocal cords in the throat. To inhale oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, air must travel to and from the lungs. The short additional distance can be huge if someone is laboring to breathe.

James Britt, a 50-year-old lift operator at a boatyard, was intoxicated when an officer in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, stopped to help him fix a flat tire. Other officers arrived and tensions rose as they tried to arrest him for disorderly conduct. Britt grew agitated as officers got him facedown, handcuffed his wrists behind his back and secured his legs, according to a report by investigators.

“Roll me over. I can’t breathe. Please let me breathe,” he could be heard screaming on dashcam video, to which an unidentified officer replied, “if you’re talking, you’re breathing.”

Officer Darren Raley later told investigators that he thought Britt was fine when he was yelling. “It’s kind of like a crying baby in a choking situation,” Raley said. “If they are crying, they are breathing.” After medics gave Britt the drug ketamine to sedate him, Raley noticed he was no longer breathing and alerted the medics, later saying they didn’t respond with urgency.

In all, three officers held Britt down for 19 minutes. His cause of death was “restraint asphyxia and the toxic effects of ketamine.” Britt’s widow filed a lawsuit against police and medics and won a .1 million settlement. The AP reached out to Raley and the police department, but they declined to comment.

In cases AP reviewed, some officers also said the person was being combative or resisting — when they may just have been struggling to breathe, like a drowning swimmer who flails in a panic.

“There’s a big difference between fighting the officers and fighting for breath,” said Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and national use-of-force expert who as a former officer and police trainer has written extensively about prone restraint.

Harriett Jefferson had called 911 many times seeking help for her son Reginald Payne, a 48-year-old diabetic who sometimes acted incoherently when his blood sugar levels were low. In February 2020, she called for the last time.

Payne, a college graduate and author, was sitting on a couch in the family home in Sacramento, California, swinging his arms and legs when paramedics arrived. They couldn’t check him, so they summoned police for help.

Three officers spoke with Payne for about 25 seconds before he slid to the floor and they rushed in. They flipped him onto his stomach and handcuffed his wrists, then two officers positioned themselves on each side of his back and held him in place while a third crossed his feet and pushed them toward his buttocks.

At around 6 feet tall and 250 pounds, Payne was obese — a well-established risk factor for prone position. Officers held him down that night for seven minutes, telling Payne he was all right as he thrashed his head side to side, gasping for air. “I can’t breathe,” he yelled. “Momma! Daddy!”

A lawsuit from Payne’s family alleged the officers were not properly trained. Under oath, one said he had learned the dangers of positional asphyxia but needed to control Payne. “I felt it was just his effort to escape us or get away from us,” Officer John Helmich, one of the officers who knelt by his shoulder, said of Payne’s movements during a deposition.

The Sacramento Police Department declined to make Helmich available for questions. The city agreed to settle the lawsuit last month for .3 million.

Eventually, first responders put Payne on a gurney and wheeled him to a waiting ambulance. “He’ll be right as rain when he comes home,” a fire department captain assured Payne’s mother.

Payne never left the hospital. A coroner determined his cause of death was “sudden cardiac arrest while being restrained in prone position.”

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Contributing to this story from the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland were Sean Mussenden, Mary Dalrymple, Ceoli Jacoby and Angelique Gingras. Contributing from AP were John Seewer, Reese Dunklin and Angeliki Kastanis.

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This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” which premiered April 30 on PBS and is available online. To view stories by journalists at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs, go here.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips

In hundreds of deaths where police used force meant to stop someone without killing them, officers violated well-known guidelines for safely restraining and subduing people — not simply once or twice, but multiple times.

Most violations involved pinning people facedown in ways that could restrict their breathing or stunning them repeatedly with Tasers, an Associated Press investigation found.

Some officers had little choice but to break policing best practices — safety guidelines that are recommended by government agencies, law enforcement groups and training experts — to save a life or protect someone.

Many other violations were harder to explain. Officers at times prematurely resorted to weapons or physical holds during routine calls or misread a person’s confusion as defiance in medical emergencies, setting off a string of mistakes. In other cases, they kept applying force even after they had people handcuffed and controlled.

For its investigation, AP catalogued 1,036 deaths over a decade’s time after officers had used force not involving their guns. In about half, medical officials ruled that law enforcement caused or contributed to the deaths, but they usually didn’t mention whether policing best practices were followed.

Counting violations of best practices also was difficult when departments didn’t document important details or withheld their files. But based on a review of tens of thousands of pages of police and court records, as well as hundreds of hours of body-camera video footage, AP found:

— Officers breached the guidelines in three or more ways in roughly 440 deaths, or about 45% of the time. In others, a single mistake sometimes fueled life-threatening injuries.

— Many who died were on drugs or alcohol, or had underlying medical conditions, making them more vulnerable to misapplied force, just as best practices forewarned.

— In about 30% of the deaths where police went outside the guidelines multiple times, the officers or bystanders were facing imminent or potential danger. Safety practices may excuse officers under those circumstances.

Because of how policing is set up in the United States, there are no national rules for how officers apply force. Best practices provide some direction but aren’t mandatory. In the end, individual departments or states set their own policies and training.

Directives from the federal government would help establish consistent use-of-force standards, said Alex del Carmen, a longtime criminologist who has monitored court-ordered reforms at troubled departments and works at Tarleton State University.

While national policing organizations offer guidelines, they don’t always trickle down to officers, and, he added, they “do not take the place of the federal government, who should have taken the lead many years ago in providing direction and clarity.”

The reasons why officers didn’t follow the guidelines varied, AP found. Some testified that they weren’t taught them. In other departments, policies weren’t up to date.

A few times, officers specifically credited their training with helping avoid mistakes. One Ohio deputy, for example, holstered his Taser after he was told a 60-year-old man wanted on a warrant had heart trouble.

Tyler Owen, a former officer, believes nearly all police do get it right. Most encounters don’t involve force, he said, and the solution for avoiding trouble is almost always straightforward: Comply with police.

“By continuing to resist and continuing to fight law enforcement, you are putting yourself at risk,” said Owen, now spokesperson for the Texas Municipal Police Association, the state’s largest law enforcement group.

When officers deal with people who are volatile or can’t comprehend commands, they sometimes need to use force outside best practices — even if that means “doing violent things to go home to their families,” he said.

AP’s investigation, done in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism and FRONTLINE (PBS), covered 2012 through 2021. While violations spanned many types of “less-lethal force,” the most prevalent happened in the four areas below.

WHAT THE GUIDELINES SAY: Police have been on notice since the 1990s about the risks of pinning someone on their chest in what is known as prone position. The concern started with positional asphyxia — when the chest can’t expand, starving the body of oxygen. But more recently, researchers have warned that compressing the chest also can stress the heart and cause cardiac arrest.

The key is getting someone off their stomach quickly. A 1995 Justice Department bulletin advised doing so “as soon as the suspect is handcuffed” and warned of a “vicious cycle” in which putting weight on a person’s back can further restrict breathing, causing them to struggle more violently to create room for their lungs. That federal guidance came amid increasing concern about prone restraint, including from a national group of police chiefs in 1993.

The DOJ also has warned that prone restraint can be more dangerous to a broad category of people police often confront — those on drugs or alcohol. Also vulnerable are people who are obese, who have cardiac or respiratory problems, or who have already been shocked with stun guns. By 2001, the DOJ advised departments to develop policies addressing positional asphyxia.

WHAT AP FOUND: Officers restrained someone facedown in at least 740 of the 1,036 deaths — usually with one, or sometimes more, using their bodyweight. In about half of the prone restraint cases, police didn’t turn over the person as soon as they were handcuffed or did so only after they had stopped responding.

Where video was available or police reports noted the duration of restraint, a few people were kept on their chests after handcuffing for less than 60 seconds. More often, the pinning continued for minutes while officers bound the suspect’s ankles together or waited for them to stop struggling.

A video obtained by AP showed a police officer in Ava, Missouri, handcuffing a man having a drug relapse and restraining him in a prone position for roughly eight minutes. The officer warned he wouldn’t ease up until the man stopped kicking. Once still, the officer asked the man, “Are you going to be calm now?” He didn’t answer. Another two minutes passed before the officer realized the man didn’t seem to be breathing. A federal judge who reviewed the video ruled in the officer’s favor in a civil lawsuit, saying the law didn’t require police to stop prone restraint once a person quit struggling. That legal interpretation, however, was out of step with federal courts in other regions, which provide broad direction on use of force.

About 240 of the prone restraint cases involved people suspected of using drugs or alcohol. For 11 minutes, officers in Gulfport, Mississippi, held down a 53-year-old man who was causing a disturbance outside a beachside restaurant. Police first shocked him with a Taser and then an officer straddled his back as he was pinned. Previously unreported dashcam video obtained by AP showed him struggling to shift his hips and shoulders, yelling “I can’t breathe.” He eventually became motionless with the officer still on top. The officer told investigators he’d been trained not to put someone on their chest and that his weight was on his knees, insisting — contrary to what the video showed — that he had turned the suspect sideways the entire time. A grand jury declined to charge the officers after the death was ruled accidental from drug use.

At least 180 people pinned to the ground were obese. Knox County deputies in Tennessee realized they needed to reposition a handcuffed man who was facedown in the dirt. “Roll him on his side so he can breathe. He’s got a big belly,” one said. But when the 280-pound man pulled his leg away, officers hog-tied him by crossing his legs, cuffing his ankles and strapping his hands and feet together behind his back. For more than three minutes, close to a dozen deputies stood by as he rolled on his stomach. One pressed a knee and hand into his upper back, forcing him to be still. A minute later, they saw his life was in danger when an officer kneeled next to his motionless body and asked his date of birth. His death was blamed on fentanyl and methamphetamines. The district attorney called the actions of deputies lawful and closed the case, but the family reached an undisclosed settlement with the county in a wrongful death lawsuit.

WHAT THE GUIDELINES SAY: When stun guns began gaining popularity among police two decades ago, there were no specific limits for how many times, or how long, someone could be shocked. That changed as deaths and lawsuits against the leading brand of the weapon, Taser, increased.

Axon Enterprise Inc., the maker of Tasers, has long said that in volatile situations, Tasers are a safer alternative to shooting suspects or smashing their head with a baton. Tasers fire small darts that are connected to the weapon with wires, delivering electricity from a close distance that briefly locks up muscles. Officers can also drive Tasers into the body, painfully jolting someone to gain compliance.

The company has insisted that factors like drug intoxication or hidden cardiac problems are really to blame for deaths, not the electricity. But some research began finding repeated shocks can create cardiac and respiratory risks.

In 2011, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national law enforcement policy group, issued guidelines saying officers should be taught that multiple uses may increase the risk of death. The guidelines warned against simultaneous shocks from more than one device and recommended capping the electricity at 15 seconds — or three blasts of the standard 5-second cycle.

By 2013, Axon in its training manual warned to “avoid prolonged and repeated exposures” and cited the concerns from law enforcement and medical groups about going beyond 15 seconds.

Safety recommendations, including from Axon, also say officers should pause between pulling the Taser trigger to evaluate the person before delivering another shock. When multiple shocks aren’t effective, officers should consider other options.

WHAT AP FOUND: Despite the warnings, officers fired their stun guns more than three times or for more than a combined 15 seconds in at least 180 of the 538 deadly encounters involving the weapons.

Three Roswell, New Mexico, officers shocked a 34-year-old man as many as 15 times after they said he was wielding a police-style baton and throwing handfuls of rocks. Some of the darts hit his head and chest. After an initial shot to the chest, the man dropped the baton, yet the stunning continued. A federal judge didn’t find fault with the overall number of Taser shots but did say the final few when the man was on the ground and incapacitated went too far because he was no longer a threat.

In Colorado, one of two officers who fired their Tasers a combined eight times at a man resisting handcuffing testified in a lawsuit that he was not trained about the danger of shocking someone more than three times. The deputy chief of the Colorado Springs Police Department at the time testified that its policy allowed officers to keep delivering electricity until the person’s behavior changed. The department determined the officers did nothing wrong, but the lawsuit alleging poor training of police is ongoing.

One of three officers in South Boston, Virginia, who shocked a man rolling on a hospital sidewalk said a suspect’s actions — not Taser guidelines — dictate what to do. The officers fired their Tasers a combined 20 times, even after handcuffing the man. “There are eight pages of warnings, and basically if I read and abided by every single warning, I would not tase anyone,” the officer said in response to a civil lawsuit later settled out of court. Federal prosecutors said they didn’t see enough evidence to pursue civil right charges against the three officers.

Some cases went far beyond the guidelines issued by Axon and policing experts. Officers fired their stun guns 10 or more times in at least 29 encounters AP identified. In a rare occurrence, two police officers in Wilson, Oklahoma, were convicted of murder after shocking a man 53 times in 2019 — just under four minutes total of firing the Tasers — even though he never tried to attack either officer. A state investigator said the man was naked in a ditch and shocked numerous times because he apparently didn’t follow orders to roll onto his stomach and put his hands behind his back.

WHAT THE GUIDELINES SAY: Axon and law enforcement organizations have warned police departments for well over a decade that the elderly and people having a mental health or medical crisis are among those at higher risk for sudden death from electrical shocks. Officers also have long been told that people on elevated surfaces or running could have a catastrophic fall when their muscles lock up.

In 2009, Axon first recommended that police aim Taser darts at the back or abdomen instead of the chest whenever possible. While the company said this would increase the weapon’s “effectiveness and avoid the remote potential risk of cardiac effect,” it said the main reason for the change was to defend against lawsuits, according to a company memo explaining the changes.

Many police agencies have adopted at least some of these recommendations, while still giving officers leeway when people pose an immediate danger and the need to control them outweighs the risks.

WHAT AP FOUND: The vulnerable groups most often subjected to shocks were suspected of using illicit drugs or showing signs of bizarre or aggressive behavior, paranoia, or unexpected strength.

Others were vulnerable in different ways. At least 10 people who died after stuns were 65 or older, including a veteran with dementia who had threatened to stab an officer with a pen at a Minnesota nursing home. The 79-year-old fell and broke his hip after the electrified darts connected. He died two months later from complications related to the fall. None of the officers faced an investigation, according to the Stillwater Police Department.

Officers shocked at least 50 people who were fleeing or susceptible to a fall. A federal court in Georgia said a DeKalb County police officer shouldn’t have fired his Taser at an unarmed passenger who inexplicably ran from a traffic stop and then climbed onto an 8-foot wall. The court said the man had neither committed a crime nor made threatening gestures, yet the officer fired his Taser without giving a warning. The man fell, broke his neck and died.

In some cases, officers opted to use a Taser even when a gun might have been justified. Among the more than 100 people shocked by police in the chest, head, neck or genitals was a Michigan man who was sexually assaulting his girlfriend in front of her two children. Hearing him yelling “I’m going to kill her,” one officer fired his Taser to stop the attack. Another shocked the suspect from 5 feet away as he was refusing to turn onto his stomach. That blast near his heart proved to be fatal, a medical examiner said. While the Rockwood Police Department’s policy warned against targeting the chest, the officer said in a deposition that wasn't where he was aiming and the man was a moving target. He told a state investigator using the Taser was safer than “going hands on” with the man or using his firearm. A prosecutor and a federal court sided with the officers, citing the safety threat.

WHAT THE GUIDELINES SAY: For the most part, federal courts have agreed that punching, using Tasers or holding someone facedown is excessive when they’re handcuffed and not resisting or ignoring an officer’s orders.

These federal court decisions have led many departments to adopt policies that allow force against handcuffed people in just a few instances. One model policy, developed by nearly a dozen law enforcement groups in 2017, called for using force against people in restraints only when they would otherwise flee or injure someone.

WHAT AP FOUND: Police failed to promptly turn over at least 360 people after they were handcuffed or controlled — about half of all cases involving prone restraint. Many of the officers also continued to use their bodyweight, hands or knees to apply pressure.

A federal appeals court said officers in Richmond, Virginia, went too far after they handcuffed and pinned a man who refused mental health treatment. After he became motionless, the officers still didn’t let up, the court said. The court didn’t fault the officers’ decision to detain the man, but said he couldn’t have posed a threat once he was outnumbered and handcuffed.

In more than 30 cases, police used Tasers in drive-stun mode or fired darts at someone who was already handcuffed or who had stopped resisting. Police officers in Hazelwood, Missouri, shocked a handcuffed man as many as 13 times and hit him repeatedly with a baton. The man was driving erratically on his way home to celebrate his wedding anniversary and appeared intoxicated. Prosecutors decided police did nothing wrong because he was aggressively resisting. A federal judge, who also sided with the police, said it was clear he fought for eight minutes, and that it took three officers and multiple Taser blasts and baton strikes to subdue him.

In a Delaware case, a federal judge wouldn’t give a state trooper immunity from an excessive force claim after he fired his Taser at a man who appeared to be secured and no longer resisting. The trooper, a certified Taser instructor, initially took steps to avoid a deadly outcome when he came across the man, who had a gun behind his back. Thinking the man might be mentally ill, the trooper holstered his gun and shocked him, causing him to fall and drop his firearm. The trooper rapidly fired again because he thought the man was rolling over and reaching for the gun. But the third jolt of electricity was unjustified, the judge said, because it came 15 seconds later and after officers had secured the man. An expert hired by the family said the final blast hit the man’s chest, something the trooper should have known to avoid.

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Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Mississippi, and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report. Mary Dalrymple and Sean Mussenden of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland also contributed.

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This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” which premiered April 30 on PBS and is available online. To view stories by journalists at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs, go here.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips

NEW YORK (AP) — It was 7 a.m. on a recent Friday when Wang Gang, a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant, jostled for a day job in New York City's Flushing neighborhood.

When a potential employer pulled up near the street corner, home to a Chinese bakery and pharmacy, Wang and dozens of other men swarmed around the car. They were hoping to be picked for work on a construction site, at a farm, as a mover — anything that would pay.

Wang had no luck, even as he waited for two more hours. It would be another day without a job since he crossed the southern U.S. border illegally in February, seeking better financial prospects than he had in his hometown of Wuhan, China.

The daily struggle of Chinese immigrants in Flushing is a far cry from the picture former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have sought to paint of them as a coordinated group of “military-age” men who have come to the United States to build an “army” and attack America.

Since the start of the year, as the Chinese newcomers have been trying to find their footing in the U.S., Trump has alluded to “fighting-age” or “military-age” Chinese men at least six times and suggested at least twice that they were forming a migrant “army." It's a talking point that is being amplified in conservative media and on social platforms.

“They’re coming in from China — 31, 32,000 over the last few months — and they’re all military age and they mostly are men,” Trump said during a campaign rally last month in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania. “And it sounds like to me, are they trying to build a little army in our country? Is that what they’re trying to do?”

As Trump and others exploit a surge in Chinese border crossings and real concerns about China's geopolitical threat to further their political aims, Asian advocacy organizations worry the rhetoric could encourage further harassment and violence toward the Asian community. Asian people in the U.S. already experienced a spike in hate incidents fueled by xenophobic rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric and blatant attacks against immigrant communities will, without question, only fuel more hate against not only Chinese immigrants but all Asian Americans in the U.S.," Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “In the midst of an already inflamed political climate and election year, we know all too well how harmful such rhetoric can be.”

Gregg Orton, national director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, said many Asian American communities remain “gripped by fear” and that some Asians still feel uncomfortable about taking public transportation.

"To know that we might be staring down another round of that, it’s pretty sobering,” he said.

Wang, who traveled several weeks from Ecuador to the southern U.S. border, then spent 48 hours in an immigration detention facility before heading to Flushing, said the idea that Chinese migrants were building a military “does not exist” among the immigrants he has met.

“It is impossible that they would walk on foot for over one month” for that purpose, he said. "We came here to make money.”

Immigrants who spoke to the AP in Flushing, a densely populated Chinese cultural enclave in Queens, said they came to the U.S. to escape poverty and financial losses from China's strict lockdown during the pandemic, or to escape the threat of imprisonment in a repressive society where they couldn’t speak or exercise their religion freely.

Many said they continue to struggle to get by. Life in the U.S. is not what they had imagined.

Since late 2022 — when China's three-year COVID-19 lockdown began to lift — the U.S. has seen a sharp rise in the number of Chinese migrants. In 2023, U.S. authorities arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border, more than 10 times the previous year's number. In December alone, border officials arrested 5,951 Chinese nationals on the southern border, a record monthly high, before the number trended down during the first three months of this year.

The U.S. and China just recently began cooperating again to deport Chinese immigrants who were in the country illegally.

Yet with tens of thousands of Chinese newcomers who have crossed into the U.S. illegally, there has been no evidence that they have tried to mount a military force or training network.

It’s true that the bulk of those who have come are single adults, according to federal data. While the data doesn't include gender, there are more men than women on the perilous route, which typically involves catching a flight to South America and then making the long, arduous trek north to the U.S. border.

Chinese immigrants in Flushing said one reason men may be coming alone in higher numbers is the expense — often more than ,000 per person to cover airfare, lodging, payments to local guides and bribes to police in countries along their journey. Another could be China's longtime family planning policy that skewed the gender ratio toward males.

There’s also the danger, said a 35-year-old Chinese man who only gave his family name of Yin because he was concerned about the safety of his wife and children, who remain in China.

He had arrived in Flushing in late April, five weeks after he left the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. He had traveled through Panama’s dangerous Darien Gap jungle and across Mexico. Signs of the journey were still fresh: His hair was messy, skin tanned with fine wrinkles, and his cardigan, once white, had not been washed for weeks.

“This trip is deadly. People die. The trip isn’t suitable for women — it’s not suitable for anyone,” said Yin.

He said that as the breadwinner, he came alone, with the hope his family could join him later.

While some in China have chosen to leave through investment schemes or talent programs in developed nations, those without resources set off for Latin America after learning from social media posts about the journey north.

Upon arriving, most of them fan out to large cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York with well-established Chinese communities, where they hope to get work and start a new life.

Immigrants who arrived in Flushing said they came to America to escape China, not to fight on its behalf.

Thirty-six-year-old Chen Wang, from the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian, said he decided to come to the U.S. in late 2021 after he posted comments critical of the ruling party on Twitter. He was admonished by local police.

“I feared that I could be locked up, so I came to America,” Chen said.

More than two years later, he is still unemployed and lives in a tent in the woods that he has made into a home. He built a fence from dead branches and dug a ditch so he could hand-wash his laundry and wash himself.

He said life in the U.S. has fallen short of his expectations, but he hopes someday to get legal status so he can travel freely around the world and live a simple life in a self-built cabin.

Chen, who served briefly in the Chinese military two decades ago, said he mostly encountered people from the bottom of Chinese society during his trek through Central America. He met no one else who had served in the Chinese military and described his fellow Chinese on the journey as simply people “chasing a better life.”

To be sure, U.S. intelligence leaders have grave concerns about the threat China’s authoritarian government poses to the country through its espionage, military capabilities and more. There also have been crimes committed by Chinese immigrants, including the arrest in March of a Chinese national breaching a military base in California, but there has been no evidence to support the assertion that migrants from China are coming to the U.S. to fight Americans.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell called the Chinese nationals “economic migrants" during an April town hall meeting hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

China has said it strongly opposes illegal immigration, and police there have arrested some who have tried to leave. Social media posts that offer advice and guides to come to the U.S. illegally have been censored in China. Instead, there are posts warning about dangers along the way and racial discrimination in the U.S.

China’s foreign ministry told the AP that Trump’s claims of a Chinese migrant army were “an egregious mismatch of the facts.” The Department of Homeland Security didn't respond to requests for comment.

Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in an emailed statement that every American should be concerned about military-age Chinese men crossing into the U.S.

“These individuals have not been vetted or screened, and we have no idea who they are affiliated with or what their intention is,” Cheung said. “This sets a dangerous precedent for bad actors and potentially nefarious individuals to exploit Joe Biden’s porous border to send countless military-aged men into the United States completely unfettered.”

The army-building narrative has been shared by many other conservatives.

“They are fighting-age males, primarily single, and you know, this isn’t a coincidence,” Republican Rep. Mike Garcia of California said during a Fox Business interview last month, nodding when host Maria Bartiromo suggested the immigrants could later be used as “saboteurs” if Chinese President Xi Jinping “directs that.”

Sapna Cheryan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, said the claims about Chinese migrants — made without evidence — build on a long history of pervasive stereotypes that Asian people do not belong in the country, ideas that have fueled acts of violence against Asian Americans.

“If that rhetoric is happening again, one thing we might be able to predict is, well, people will probably take that and feel emboldened to engage in these heinous acts,” she said.

Li Kai, also known as Khaled, a 44-year-old Muslim from Tangshan in the northern Hebei province, a city close to Beijing, said he was worried about Trump’s statements regarding illegal immigration and Muslims, but said he has no choice other than to make his new life in the U.S. work.

He was one of the few who made the trip with his family. He shares a bunk bed and sofa with his wife and two sons in a temporary home in Flushing where he has placed an American flag on the wall.

Li said they fled China last year, after he participated in a gathering over the future of a local mosque that was broken up by riot police and he feared his own arrest. He chose the U.S. because it is a free society, where his children have learned to recite from the Quran.

He said the migrants he encountered on his journey all left China for the U.S. to try to improve their prospects in life, and he was grateful for that opportunity. When his sons are at school, he studies for a commercial driver's license and then hopes to find a job and start paying taxes.

“Now that I have brought my family here, I want to have a stable life here," he said. “I would like to pay back.”

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Tang reported from Washington.

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) —

Fans of Korean pop bands around the world are increasingly channeling their millions-strong online community into climate and environmental activism, protesting business deals linked to coal power, urging K-pop entertainers to cut waste and raising awareness about climate-related issues.

Other climate activist groups have begun joining forces with Kpop4Planet, an environmental group founded in 2021 by K-pop fans Nurul Sarifah and Dayeon Lee. After Kpop4Planet petitioned South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co., it recently scrapped a deal linked to coal power plants in Indonesia.

The ability to quickly organize a large, dedicated group has made K-pop fans an increasingly influential lobby online as they participate in protests and promote causes that have included the Black Lives Matter movement. Politicians also have tried to tap into that power.

“I spotted how K-pop fans can be seen as a potential power,” said Sarifah. “We think we can harness that power for climate change action.”

In 2021, Korea Beyond Coal— a coalition of civic groups calling for South Korea to stop using coal power — teamed up with Kpop4Planet in 2021 to raise awareness about plans for a coal-burning power plant.

The plant site near Maengbang Beach, the photo shoot location for album artwork for one of K-pop band BTS's hit songs, is a popular destination for the band's fans and a joint petition created by Kpop4Planet and Korea Beyond Coal got thousands of signatures.

“We realized Kpop4Planet has the experience of mobilizing and connecting people and sharing information using social media ... which is very helpful when it comes to climate campaigning,” said Euijin Kim, a communications officer for Solutions for Our Climate, which is part of Korea Beyond Coal.

The power plant is still going ahead, but the groups were able to raise awareness about the environmental issues caused by coal power, Lee said.

“We want to show the power and influence that the K-pop fans can have ... we believe that if we gather all together, we can make better social impacts and maybe change our society in more sustainable ways,” said Lee. “And, of course, love K-pop together.”

Korean pop culture fan clubs' activism and philanthropy began in the 1960s, said Stephanie Choi, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Buffalo studying K-pop culture. Now, K-pop fans regularly organize thousands of people on social media platforms to buy gifts for wildly popular K-pop singers and bands, or promote other causes.

Sarifah and Lee have aligned Kpop4Planet’s activities with various causes, beginning with urging entertainment companies to cut back on waste related to the K-pop fan culture of collecting photo cards of band members, which are included in albums and sold as merchandise. K-pop labels often release multiple versions of albums with dozens of different photo cards, encouraging fans to bulk-buy albums to participate in lucky draws for meet-and-greet events with K-pop stars.

“The problem is that this creates a lot of waste,” Lee said in an interview. “We wanted to tackle that issue first, because it was the most well-known issue among K-pop fans.”

Entertainment companies haven't directly responded to Kpop4Planet's petitions and other approaches, but Lee still views the campaign as a success.

“There were changes after our campaigning: major entertainment companies published environmental, social and governance reports and published eco-friendly albums, including some releasing records using QR codes to minimize waste," she said.

Kpop4Planet's petition against Hyundai protested an agreement the company signed to buy aluminum from projects linked to coal power in Indonesia.

The memorandum of understanding signed in 2022 with a unit of one of Indonesia’s largest coal miners, Adaro Energy Indonesia, gave Hyundai the right to purchase low-carbon aluminum from an industrial park Indonesian officials portray as “green".

However, the smelter used to make the aluminum initially will be powered by newly built coal-fired plants. Hydroelectric and solar power will power the industrial park at a later date.

Given K-pop group BTS's collaboration with Hyundai, Kpop4Planet saw a chance to put their influence to work. In March 2023, Kpop4Planet launched a petition asking Hyundai to withdraw from the project until it phases out coal, and to disclose details of the energy used to make the aluminum. The petition got over 10,000 signatures in two months, and Kpop4Planet sent their pleas to Hyundai Motor's headquarters. In March, Hyundai Motor said it had ended its agreement with Adaro.

“Following the expiry of the MOU at the end of 2023, both companies have decided not to renew it and to explore other opportunities independently,” a spokesperson for Hyundai Motor wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

Adaro did not respond to a request for comment sent by AP.

“This a victory of thousands of people, friends who took actions and also show that they genuinely care about the climate crisis and local communities," said Sarifah.

___ Asia entertainment editor Juwon Park in Seoul contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Zachary Cunha, U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, said the multi-year investigation found that — rather than complying with its legal obligation to provide services in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of the children — the state left them hospitalized at Bradley for months and in some cases for more than a year.

The findings have been sent to Gov. Dan McKee and the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families.

“It is nothing short of appalling that the state has chosen to warehouse children in a psychiatric institution, rather than stepping up to provide the community care, support, and services that these kids need, and that the law requires,” Cunha said. He hopes the investigation will prompt the state to take swift action to meet its obligations under federal law.

The findings have been sent to Gov. Dan McKee and the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families.

“This troubling report identifies long-standing issues where improvements are clearly needed,” said Olivia DaRocha, an aide to McKee, “issues that are exacerbated by the national shortage of home and community-based behavioral health services.”

“While the administration has taken actions to improve our current placement system, we understand that more must be done, and we support DCYF’s continued cooperation with the U.S. Attorney and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” she added. “Together, we will continue to seek short- and long-term solutions to provide each child with a behavioral health disability the appropriate services in the most integrated setting.”

Although inpatient admissions at Bradley are designed to last only one to two weeks, the federal investigation concluded that children with behavioral health disabilities in DCYF’s care were often forced to languish in the hospital despite being ready for discharge, and despite the fact that the children would be better served in a family home, investigators said.

From Jan. 1, 2017, through Sept. 30, 2022, 527 children in the care or custody of DCYF — or receiving services voluntarily through the agency — were admitted to Bradley Hospital. Of these, 116 kids were hospitalized in a single admission for more than 100 consecutive days, 42 were hospitalized for more than 180 days, and seven were hospitalized for more than one year.

Many of the children were subjected to avoidable and unnecessarily lengthy hospitalizations because DCYF failed to provide the community-based services they need, according to investigators, who said keeping a child hospitalized for an extended period when their needs could be served in a less restrictive setting only exacerbates the child’s acute needs.

DCYF takes these findings very seriously, according to Damaris Teixeira, a public information officer for the department.

Starting in November 2022, the department has worked with Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital to expedite discharges to appropriate placements as quickly as possible, he said. The state also launched a new Mobile Response and Stabilization Services program to provide time-limited, on-demand crisis intervention services in any setting in which a behavioral health crisis is occurring, including homes, schools and emergency departments.

To date, 90% of the youth in the program did not end up requiring psychiatric hospitalization, he said.

The state is also investing about million to expand in-state residential capacity, including a facility in Exeter that will serve 16 youth. The state Legislature also appropriated million for the building of a 12-bed psychiatric residential facility to address in-state capacity need.

The investigation, which was also conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights, also found that DCYF’s failure to look for placements in a family home setting with services could lead both to delayed discharges and to inappropriate placements post-discharge, which, in turn, often leads to subsequent hospitalizations.

Office of Civil Rights Director Melanie Fontes Rainer said the investigation reinforces the agency’s commitment to continue to protect the right of individuals to live in their own homes and communities.

“We must do better by our children and the communities we serve, and states and others must follow federal civil rights laws to ensure every child can access care free from discrimination,” she said.

The lawsuit in federal court alleges that convicted prisoners were forced to sign a confession of judgment, agreeing to a balance and payment plan for administrative and room and board fees, before being released from the Black Hawk County jail in Waterloo, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northeast of Des Moines.

Any cash carried by a person when they are booked is seized and applied toward the debt, the complaint said.

In a statement, the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office said inmates receive a statement of what they are owed when they are released, with the option to sign a confession of judgment outlining a payment plan. That is not required, according to the sheriff's office.

Iowa allows a county sheriff to seek reimbursement for administrative fees and room and board, but the lawsuit alleges that the policies in Black Hawk County demand an individual signs away their legal protections without due process or the ability to consult their lawyer and are therefore unconstitutional.

“In those circumstances, they have no bargaining power, no attorney, zero meaningful advocacy of what they’re doing and what they’re giving up,” said Rita Bettis Austen, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.

ACLU of Iowa and Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Public Justice, along with other law firms, filed the suit on behalf of Leticia Roberts, who is described as having served two sentences after being charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.

Roberts was made to sign the agreements before getting back her possessions, and it was not notarized in her presence, according to the complaint.

The complaint alleges that Black Hawk County collected nearly 0,000 in jail fees from July 2021 to July 2023, roughly twice as much or more than other counties, because of the confession of judgment.

Iowa law specifies how 60% of the collected funds must be used — for expenses related to courthouse and jail infrastructure or medical expenses — and says the sheriff may make recommendations to the county board of supervisors or the two may work in tandem to develop a plan to use the funds.

Public records indicate members of the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors questioned Sheriff Tony Thompson over the use of the unallocated 40% of collected fees for expenses at the shooting range, including “for a cotton candy machine, an ice cream machine and laser tag," according to meeting minutes.

The records show Thompson told the board that those expenses were for the “entertainment of children too young for the training," which was intended for staff and their families to learn more about gun safety.

Educational events on safety are “fulfilling, rewarding, and important to the total wellness and investment in a more inclusive, forthright and selflessly serving staff," the department said in its statement.

“It also seems disingenuous to have these very programs be paid for by the hard-working taxpayers when they are the ones who are already victimized by the offender,” Thompson said.

Roberts, a 40-year-old mother of three children who owed 0 in jail fees, said she was rightly held accountable for her mistakes, but “shaking down people for money as they get released from jail is wrong.”

“I only signed it because I didn’t think I had a choice and it was contingent upon my release,” Roberts said. "It makes me upset because the sheriff’s office is supposed to uphold the law and not bend it."

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — As North Carolina's public university system considers a vote on changing its diversity policy, the system's flagship university board voted Monday to cut funding for diversity programs in next year's budget.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees approved a change that would divert [scripts/homepage/home-dev.php].3 million of diversity spending from state funds to go toward public safety and policing at a special meeting to address the university's budget. The board's vote would only impact UNC-Chapel Hill's diversity funding, which could result in the loss of its diversity office.

UNC will join the ranks of other notable public universities that have stripped diversity spending, such as the University of Florida in Gainesville, which announced in a March memo it was reallocating funds to faculty recruitment. But unlike UF, which implemented its funding rollback after the state Legislature passed a bill banning diversity program spending at state universities, UNC “set the tone” on funding cuts before the North Carolina Legislature stepped in, budget chair Dave Boliek said.

“We’re going ahead and, you know, sort of taking a leadership role in this. That’s the way I view it,” Boliek said on Monday after the vote.

The change would go into effect at the start of the 2024-2025 fiscal year on July 1, Boliek said. Any jobs that could be impacted would occur after that date, although Boliek said he wasn't sure how many positions may be affected.

But the decision about whether the spending cut would remove UNC's Office of Diversity & Inclusion will be up to the university's flexible management plan, which is operated by interim Chancellor Lee Roberts and his team. The diversity office has 12 staff members, including a chief diversity officer, according to its website.

The budget, which includes the [scripts/homepage/home-dev.php].3 million amendment, will now be submitted to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, UNC spokesperson Kevin Best said in an email.

The vote to shift more funding to public safety comes as continued pro-Palestinian protests on UNC's campus have resulted in several arrests in recent weeks. The budget committee vice-chair Marty Kotis said law enforcement has already been forced to react to protests, but they need more funding to keep the university “safe from a larger threat.”

“It's important to consider the needs of all 30,000 students, not just the 100 or so that may want to disrupt the university's operations,” Kotis said. “It takes away resources for others.”

But Boliek, who is also running for state auditor in Tuesday's runoff elections, said the timing of the reallocation was “happenstance" and that internal conversations on diversity spending cuts have persisted for almost a year.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions last year — in which UNC was sued for its admission policies — the board has continually considered how it should handle university diversity programs, he said. Diverting more money toward public safety was also a concern for the board in the aftermath of a fatal August shooting on the UNC campus that left one faculty member dead.

“It makes sense where we can take money that I believe is not being productively used and put it to something that is more productive, and that is providing public safety,” he said.

Before the start of North Carolina's short legislative session, Republican House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters there was interest in pursuing anti-DEI legislation but wanted to let university boards review their diversity policies first.

At least 20 states have seen Republican bill proposals seeking to limit diversity and inclusion programs in several public institutions such as universities.

Now, all eyes are on the UNC Board of Governors, whose 24 members are expected to vote next week on changing its diversity policy after the board's university governance committee voted to reverse and replace the rule last month. The change would alter a 2019 diversity, equity and inclusion regulation that defines the roles of various DEI positions at 17 schools across the state — and it would appear to eliminate those jobs if the policy is removed.

If the alteration is approved, it will take effect immediately.

The design, “Seeing Us,” by Jin Young Song and Douglass Alligood, was revealed a day before the second anniversary of the attack. It was selected from among 20 submissions to the 5/14 Memorial Commission, which was established months after an 18-year-old white gunman opened fire at a Tops supermarket on May 14, 2022.

New York state has committed million to the million project, Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference to unveil the design. Buffalo will contribute jumi million, and a yearlong fundraising campaign is expected to make up the difference.

“As we approach the solemn two-year anniversary of when our neighbors were senselessly slaughtered solely because of the color of their skin, we rededicate ourselves in supporting the East Buffalo community, remembering those we lost, and supporting those who were injured,” she said.

Nine shoppers, ranging in age from 32 to 86, and a retired Buffalo police officer working as a security guard, were killed during the Saturday afternoon attack. Three store employees were wounded.

The Rev. Mark Blue, chairman of the 5/14 Memorial Commission, said the victims’ families were consulted during the design selection process.

“What happened on 5/14 was an act of senseless violence and it was an act of hate,” he said. "It’s my intent to make sure we have a memorial that the families and the communities can be proud of.”

Payton Gendron is serving a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole after he pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism. He is awaiting trial on separate federal charges and could receive the death penalty if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.

To mark the second anniversary of the shooting on Tuesday, Tops Friendly Markets will dedicate another memorial near the store and hold a moment of silence at 2:28 p.m., the time of the attack.

Buffalo artist Valeria Cray and her son Hiram Cray, a faculty member at the State University of New York Corning Community College, created a sculpture called “Unity for the Honor Space” for the memorial. The site also features 10 granite bollards.

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the apartment door where a Florida deputy shot and killed Senior Airman Roger Fortson, a small shrine is growing with the tributes from the Air Force unit grappling with his loss.

There is a long wooden plank, anchored by two sets of aviator wings, and a black marker for mourners to leave prayers and remembrances for the 23-year-old.

One visitor left an open Stella Artois beer. Others left combat boots, bouquets and an American flag. Shells from 105mm and 30mm rounds like those that Fortson handled as a gunner on the unit's AC-130J special operations aircraft stand on each side of the door — the empty 105mm shell is filled with flowers.

Then there's the quarter.

In military tradition, quarters are left quietly and often anonymously if a fellow service member was there at the time of death.

The 1st Special Operations Wing in the Florida Panhandle, where Fortson served took time from normal duties Monday to process his death and “to turn members’ attention inward, use small group discussions, allow voices to be heard, and connect with teammates,” the Wing said in a statement.

In multiple online forums, a heated debate has spilled out in the week since Fortson was shot: Did police have the right apartment? A caller reported a domestic disturbance, but Fortson was alone. Why would the deputy shoot so quickly? Why would the police kill a service member?

There are also questions about whether race played a role because Fortson is Black, and echoes of the police killing of George Floyd.

Fortson was holding his legally owned gun when he opened his front door, but it was pointed to the floor. Based on body camera footage released by the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office, the deputy only commanded Fortson to drop the gun after he shot him. The sheriff has not released the race of the deputy.

“We know our Air Commandos are seeing the growing media coverage and are having conversations on what happened,” Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, said in a message to unit leaders last week.

He urged those leaders to listen with an effort to understand their troops: “We have grieving teammates with differing journeys.”

In 2020, after Floyd's death, then-Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Kaleth O. Wright wrote an emotional note to his troops about police killings of Black men and children: “I am a Black man who happens to be the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. I am George Floyd … I am Philando Castile, I am Michael Brown, I am Alton Sterling, I am Tamir Rice.”

At the time, Wright was among a handful of Black military leaders, including now-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who said they needed to address the killing and how it was affecting them.

“My greatest fear, not that I will be killed by a white police officer (believe me my heart starts racing like most other Black men in America when I see those blue lights behind me) … but that I will wake up to a report that one of our Black Airmen has died at the hands of a white police officer," Wright wrote at the time.

Wright, who is now retired, posted a photo on his personal Facebook page Thursday of Fortson standing in matching flight suits with his little sister.

“Who Am I … I’m SrA Roger Fortson,” Wright posted. “This is what I always feared. Praying for his family. RIH young King.”

On Friday, many from Fortson’s unit will travel to Georgia to attend his funeral, with a flyover of Special Operations AC-130s planned.

“You were taken too soon,” another senior airman wrote on the wooden plank at Fortson's front door. “No justice no peace.”

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is now banned from entering nearly 20% of her state after two more tribes banished her this week over comments she made earlier this year about tribal leaders benefitting from drug cartels.

The latest developments in the ongoing tribal dispute come on the heels of the backlash Noem faced for writing about killing a hunting dog that misbehaved in her latest book. It is not clear how these controversies will affect her chances to become Donald Trump's running mate because it is hard to predict what the former president will do.

The Yankton Sioux Tribe voted Friday to ban Noem from their land in southeastern South Dakota just a few days after the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe took the same action. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes had already taken action to keep her off their reservations. Three other tribes haven't yet banned her.

Noem reinforced the divisions between the tribes and the rest of the state in March when she said publicly that tribal leaders were catering to drug cartels on their reservations while neglecting the needs of children and the poor.

“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said at a forum. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say, ’Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.' ”

Noem's spokesman didn't respond Saturday to email questions about the bans. But previously she has said she believes many people who live on the reservations still support her even though she is clearly not getting along with tribal leaders.

Noem addressed the issue in a post on X on Thursday along with posting a link to a YouTube channel about law enforcement’s video about drugs on the reservations.

“Tribals leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said. “We can only do this through partnerships because the Biden Administration is failing to do their job.”

The tribes have clashed with Noem in the past, including over the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock and during the COVID-19 pandemic when they set up coronavirus checkpoints at reservation borders to keep out unnecessary visitors. She was temporarily banned from the Oglala Sioux reservation in 2019 after the protest dispute.

And there is a long history of rocky relations between Native Americans in the state and the government dating back to 1890, when soldiers shot and killed hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at the Wounded Knee massacre as part of a campaign to stop a religious practice known as the Ghost Dance.

Political observer Cal Jillson, who is based at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said this tribal dispute feels a little different because Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit.”

“I’m sure that Gov. Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said.

Noem appears to be getting tired of answering questions about her decision to kill Cricket after the dog attacked a family’s chickens during a stop on the way home from a hunting trip and then tried to bite the governor. Noem also drew criticism for including an anecdote she has since asked her publisher to pull from the book that described “staring down” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a private meeting that experts said was implausible.

After those controversies, she canceled several interviews that were planned as part of the book tour. With all the questions about “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," no one is even asking anymore about Noem's decision to appear in an infomercial-style video lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas who gave her veneers.

Jillson said it all probably hurts her chances with Trump, who has been auditioning a long list of potential vice-president candidates.

“I think that the chaos that Trump revels in is the chaos he creates. Chaos created by somebody else simply detracts attention from himself,” Jillson said.

University of South Dakota political science professor Michael Card said that if it isn’t the vice-president slot, it’s not clear what is in Noem’s political future because she is prevented from running for another term as governor. Noem is in her second term as governor.

She could go after U.S. Senator Mike Rounds' seat or try to return to the House of Representatives, Card said.

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This story was first published on May 11, 2024. It was updated on May 13, 2024, to correct the name of a tribe to Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, instead of Sisseton-Wahpeton Ovate.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian judge Monday lifted a ban on the social media platform X showing Australians a video of a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church.

The temporary ban was put in place April 22, but the judge rejected the application from Australia’s eSafety Commission to extend the court order that would have expired Monday.

Australian Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Kennett said he would publish his reasons for imposing and lifting the order later.

The decision was a win for the company rebranded by billionaire Elon Musk when he bought Twitter l ast year. X was alone among social media platforms in refusing to remove video of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel being stabbed. Musk has argued that he is standing up for a freedom of speech principle. Australian lawmakers have accused him of arrogance and of lacking a sense of social responsibility.

“Not trying to win anything. I just don’t think we should be suppressing Australian’s rights to free speech," Musk posted on X after the ruling.

X is also taking a separate court action against eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, that challenges the validity of her notice requiring the platform to remove video of the April 15 attack in an Assyrian Orthodox church. The judge is expected to consider setting a hearing date Wednesday.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said the government might consider changing Australian law after reading Kennett’s reasons for removing his order that required X to hide the video from users. “There’s a fundamental principle at stake and that is, if you’re a company or anybody operating in Australia, then you’ve got to abide by Australian laws,” Jones said.

He also said the government supported Inman Grant’s stance on the video. "She made the right decision in our view to ensure that that dangerous, violent, harmful material wasn’t being propagated online and encouraging and inciting that sort of behavior here in Australia,” Jones said.

A 16-year-old boy was charged with terrorism-related offenses in the stabbings of the bishop and a priest who were injured in the attack.

X has geoblocked Australian users from the content, but eSafety wants a worldwide ban on the video, which can be still accessed from Australia through VPNs.

An eSafety lawyer, Tim Begbie, described X in court last week as a “market leader in proliferating and distributing violent content and violent and extremist material.”

Begbie said Australia could not be expected to conform to X’s “pro-free speech stance.”

“The fact is that that stance is in large measure illusory. Because X doesn’t stand for ‘global removal is bad’ in some pure sense,” Begbie said.

X’s own policies repeatedly refer to circumstances in which the platform will elect to remove content globally, Begbie said.

“The real position is this: X says that ‘reasonable’ means what X wants it to mean,” Begbie said.

“Global removal is reasonable when X does it because X wants to do it. But it becomes unreasonable when X is told to do it by the laws of Australia,” Begbie added.

X lawyer Bret Walker said X had taken reasonable steps to block the content from Australia but there had been glitches.

He described eSafety’s demand for a global ban as astonishing and the notice as invalid.

“You don’t expect to see statutes saying the Australian Parliament will regulate what concerning Australia — that is events in Australia — can be viewed in Russia, Finland, Belgium or the United States,” Walker said.

“Not unless we want to become isolationist to a degree that is unthinkable,” Walker added.

For much of the past two years, Caitlin Clark has been the centerpiece of the college basketball world.

Now Clark, like NBA Hall of Famer Larry Bird was 45 years ago, is involuntarily the focus of discussions about race and her transition to professional basketball. Though Clark hasn't said anything to fuel the Black-white narrative surrounding her meteoric rise, talks about a double standard are being had.

“I think it’s a huge thing. I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,” Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson said when asked about the race element in Clark’s popularity and before she recently signed two major endorsement deals. “It really is because you can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that’s something that people don’t want to see.

"They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”

To be clear, Clark is a skilled hardcourt savant from Iowa. Bird was a skilled hardcourt savant from Indiana State. And like Bird, Clark has captivated audiences and brought unmatched attention to women's basketball with an ability to score from every corner of the court.

Neither Bird nor Clark were the first great white male or female pro basketball players. Jerry West is the actual NBA logo and before Clark, the long list of talented white WNBA players included Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart.

But sports can be elevated by a heated rivalry, particularly when race is involved.

Clark's rise has come with an on-court bravado that made her must-watch TV as she led the Hawkeyes to back-to-back NCAA championship game appearances. When Bird led the Sycamores to the title game in 1979, he squared off against Magic Johnson in one of the most-watched games in NCAA tourney history.

At Iowa, Clark's on-court rival in the NCAA Tournament was former LSU star Angel Reese. Then she took on women's juggernaut South Carolina and coach Dawn Staley. The matchups created the kind of made-for-social media moments that captivated audiences, regardless of gender.

The matchups also led to ongoing discussions about how race plays a factor in the treatment afforded to Clark, a white woman from “America’s Heartland,” as compared to Black counterparts like Reese.

Clark has said she and Reese are just pieces of a larger movement.

“I would say me and Angel have always been great competitors,” Clark said prior to Iowa's Elite Eight matchup with Reese and LSU in March. “I think Angel would say the same, like it’s not just us in women’s basketball. That’s not the only competitive thing about where our game is at, and that’s what makes it so good. We need multiple people to be really good.”

Still, the race-based debate over perceived slights to Black players or favoritism toward Clark is not going away as the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft prepares for her first regular-season game on Tuesday night when Indiana plays Connecticut.

"I think new fans, or maybe returning fans to women’s college basketball, have been drawn in. In part because of Clark. But also, you know, because of the LSU-Iowa rivalry," said Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history at Arizona State University.

“There are basketball reasons," Jackson said, "but also there are racial reasons for why Clark has been able to kind of break off into a completely different stratosphere from players that came before her.”

Because of the perceived double-standard, nearly everything involving Clark gets questioned:

— Clark's first preseason game was streamed, but Reese's was not.

— Clark gets an endorsement deal. Other established Black stars not so much.

— If Reese talks trash, it's viewed as unsportsmanlike. If Clark does it, she's being competitive.

— Reese received some backlash for going to the Met Gala before a game, raising questions would there have been same type of scrutiny if Clark had graced the red carpet.

Wilson, who signed with Gatorade last week and announced Saturday that she is getting a Nike signature shoe, and others have cited how companies are clamoring to be in business with Clark as an example of the disparity in how players are treated.

The deal Clark struck with Nike will reportedly pay her million over eight years — making it the richest sponsorship contract for a women’s basketball player, and it includes a signature shoe. Before Wilson's announcement Saturday, the only other active players in the WNBA with a signature shoe were Elena Delle Donne, Sabrina Ionescu and Stewart – who are all white.

The perception extends beyond endorsements.

While Clark’s preseason debut was available on the WNBA League Pass streaming app, a post on the X platform from the WNBA incorrectly stated that all games, including the debut of Reese and fellow rookie former South Carolina standout Kamilla Cardoso for the Chicago Sky, would also be available.

So, a fan in attendance at the Sky’s game livestreamed it. It received more than 620,000 views.

In an apology post explaining why the Sky's game wasn't also available, the WNBA said Clark's game was available as part of a limited free preview of its streaming app.

There also have been racial components to how Clark is treated on social media as compared to others, most notably Reese.

Reese, who has previously spoken about the vitriol she received online, was recently attacked again after she missed a preseason practice to attend the Met Gala. Clark also has been the target of online criticism, but apparently not to the extent that Reese has been.

Online hate-speech accounts for approximately 1 percent of all social media posts in the context of sports, according to Daniel Kilvington, course director in Media & Cultural Studies at Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, England.

“Although this might sound quite low, consider how much traffic is online and how many posts are made every single day,” said Kilvington, whose work with the Tackling Online Hate in Football research group has looked at the issue through the sport of soccer. “One percent is therefore 1% too high as athletes are primary targets of hate-speech, harassment and death threats simply for playing a game they love.”

But as Clark's popularity grows, so will the debate. Jackson believes it's a good time to openly have discussions about it.

“I don’t know how many times I read and heard her described as generational talent," the ASU professor said. “And whenever we’re making those cases, I immediately think, well, who are the other generational talents we’ve had? And, I think too often the athletes could be placed in that category who have been Black women have not had that sort of gushing attention. And especially the kind of general public, crossover saturation that Caitlin Clark has had.

“There are overlapping, intersecting reasons for why that is. But, I think we can’t not think about it if the goal here is to have equitable treatment of the athletes in the sport.”

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AP Sports Writer Mark Anderson and AP reporter Corey Williams contributed.

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WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

ELDORADO DO SUL, Brazil (AP) — More rain started coming down on Saturday in Brazil’s already flooded Rio Grande do Sul state, where many of those remaining are poor people with limited ability to move to less dangerous areas.

More than 15 centimeters (nearly six inches) of rain could fall over the weekend and will probably worsen flooding, according to the Friday afternoon bulletin from Brazil’s national meteorology institute. It said there is also a high likelihood that winds will intensify and water levels rise in the Patos lagoon next to the state capital, Porto Alegre, and the surrounding area.

As of Saturday afternoon, heavy rains were falling in the northern and central regions of the state, and water levels were rising.

Carlos Sampaio, 62, lives in a low-income community next to soccer club Gremio’s stadium in Porto Alegre. His two-story home doubles as a sports bar.

Even though the first floor is inundated, he said he won't leave, partly out of fear of looters in his high-crime neighborhood, where police carry assault rifles as they patrol its flooded streets. But Sampaio also has nowhere else to go, he told The Associated Press.

“I am analyzing how safe I am, and I know that my belongings aren't safe at all,” Sampaio said. “As long as I can fight for what is mine, within my abilities to not leave myself exposed, I will fight.”

At least 136 people have died in the floods since they began last week, and 125 more are missing, local authorities said Friday. The number of people displaced from their homes because of the torrential rains has surpassed 400,000, of whom 70,000 are sheltering in gyms, schools and other temporary locations.

“I came here on Monday — lost my apartment to the flood," Matheus Vicari, a 32-year-old Uber driver, said inside a shelter where he is staying with his young son. "I don’t spent a lot of time here. I try to be out to think about something else.”

Some residents of Rio Grande do Sul state have found sanctuary at second homes, including Alexandra Zanela, who co-owns a content agency in Porto Alegre.

Zanela and her partner volunteered when the floods began, but chose to move out after frequent electricity and water cuts. She headed to the beachfront city of Capao da Canoa — so far unaffected by flooding — where her partner’s family owns a summer home.

“We took a ride with my sister-in-law, took our two cats, my mother and a friend of hers and came here safely. We left the Porto Alegre chaos,” Zanela, 42, told the AP by phone. “It is very clear that those who have the privilege to leave are in a much safer position, and those living in the poorer areas of Porto Alegre have no option.”

Weather across South America is affected by the El Niño climate phenomenon, a naturally occurring event that periodically warms surface waters in the equatorial Pacific. In Brazil, El Niño has historically caused droughts in the north and intense rainfall in the south, and this year the effects have been particularly severe.

Scientists say extreme weather is happening more frequently because of climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels that emit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, and overwhelmingly agree the world needs to drastically cut the burning of coal, oil and gas to limit global warming.

But there is also a need for social policy responses, said Natalie Unterstell, president of Talanoa Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based climate policy think tank.

“Providing an effective response to climate change in Brazil requires us to combat inequalities,” Unterstell said.

In Brazil, the poor often live in houses built from less resilient materials such as wood and in unregulated areas more vulnerable to damage from extreme weather, such as low-lying areas or on steep hillsides.

“We cannot say that the worst is over,” Rio Grande do Sul Gov. Eduardo Leite said on social media Friday. The day before, he estimated that 19 billion reais (.7 billion) will be needed to rebuild the state.

The scale of devastation may be most comparable to Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005, Sergio Vale, chief economist at MB Associates, wrote in a note Friday.

Rio Grande do Sul has the sixth-highest gross domestic product per capita among Brazil's 26 states and the federal district, according to the national statistics institute. Many of the state's inhabitants descend from Italian and German immigrants.

“In the popular imagination, the population of Rio Grande do Sul is seen as white and well-off, but this is not the reality,” said Marília Closs, a researcher at the CIPO Platform, a climate think tank. “It’s very important to dispel this fiction, because it’s constructed with a political objective” to erase Black and poor residents, she said.

In Canoas, one of the hardest-hit cities in the state, Paulo Cezar Wolf’s small wooden house has been fully submerged, along with all his belongings. The truck driver, who is Black, now lives in the back of a loaned truck with six of his neighbors, who all cook, eat and sleep there.

Wolf, 54, has considered leaving the rural region, where he has lived since childhood, but has nowhere else to go and doesn’t want to leave behind his four adult children.

“It is too late for someone like me to move somewhere else,” Wolf said, wearing a donated sweatshirt as he stood on a highway.

The meteorology institute predicts the arrival of a mass of cold and dry air will reduce the chance of rain beginning Monday. But it also means temperatures are set to drop sharply, to around freezing by Wednesday. That makes hypothermia a concern for those who are wet and lacking electricity.

Celebrities, among them supermodel Gisele Bündchen who is from Rio Grande do Sul, have been sharing links and information about where and how to donate to help flood victims. Churches, businesses, schools and ordinary citizens around the country have been rallying to provide support.

The U.N. refugee agency is distributing blankets and mattresses. It's sending additional items, such as emergency shelters, kitchen sets, blankets, solar lamps and hygiene kits, from its stockpiles in northern Brazil and elsewhere in the region.

On Thursday, Brazil’s federal government announced a package of 50.9 billion reais ( billion) for employees, beneficiaries of social programs, the state and municipalities, companies and rural producers in Rio Grande do Sul.

The same day, the Brazilian air force parachuted more than two tons of food and water to areas that are inaccessible because of blocked roads. The navy has sent three vessels to help those affected, among them the Atlantic Multipurpose Aircraft Ship, which it said is considered the largest warship in Latin America. It arrived on the state's coast Saturday.

The U.S. has sent ,000 for personal hygiene kits and cleaning supplies and will be providing an additional 0,000 in humanitarian assistance through existing regional programs, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

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Eléonore Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Over the past two decades, Gee’s Bend quilts have captured the public’s imagination with their kaleidoscopic colors and their daring geometric patterns. The groundbreaking art practice was cultivated by direct descendants of slaves in rural Alabama who have faced oppression, geographic isolation and intense material constraints.

As of this year, their improvisational art has also come to embody a very modern question: What happens when distinctive cultural tradition collides with corporate America?

Enter Target. The retailer launched a limited-edition collection based on the quilters' designs for Black History Month this year. Consumer appetites proved to be high as many stores around the country sold out of the checkered sweaters, water bottles and faux-quilted blankets.

“We’re actually in a quilt revival right now, like in real time,” says Sharbreon Plummer, an artist and scholar. “They’re so popularized, and Target knew that. It created the biggest buzz when it came out.” Indeed, there has been a resurgence of interest among Gen Z and millennials in conscious consumption and the homemade — with “cottagecore” style, baking bread, DIY bracelets — but both are at odds with the realities of fast fashion.

The Target designs were “inspired by” five Gee's Bend quilters who reaped limited financial benefits from the collection’s success. They received a flat rate for their contributions rather than pay proportionate to Target’s sales. A spokesperson for Target wouldn’t share sales numbers from the collection but confirmed that it indeed sold out in many stores.

Unlike the pay structure of the Freedom Quilting Bee of the 1960s — an artist-run collective that disbursed payment equitably to Gee's Bend quilters, who were salaried and could set up Social Security benefits — one-off partnerships with companies like Target benefit only a small number of people, in this case five women from two families.

The maxim “representation matters” is not new, but it's gaining wider traction. Still, when visibility for some doesn't translate into meaningful change for a marginalized community as a whole, how is that reconciled?

”Every stage of the finances has been problematic,” says Patricia Turner, a retired professor in World Arts and Culture and African American Studies at UCLA who traced the commodification of Gee's Bend quilts back to the white collector Bill Arnett in the 1990s. “I’m really bothered by Target's in-house designer manipulating the look of things to make it more palatable for their audience," she says of the altered color palettes and patterns.

Target spokesperson Brian Harper-Tibaldo said that quilters had the opportunity to provide input on multiple occasions throughout the process.

“We worked with five quilters from The Quilters of Gee’s Bend on a variety of limited-time only items," he wrote in an emailed statement. “As is standard with limited-time collections at Target, each quilter was paid a discussed and agreed upon fee for their services. As outlined in our contracts, Target had the right to make final design decisions, however, with the goal of honoring their storied heritage, the process was highly collaborative.”

While thumbnail-size photos of the makers appeared on some marketing materials and the text “Gee's Bend” was printed on clothing tags, the company's engagement with the quilters was limited. As soon as Black History Month ended, the quilters' names and images were scrubbed from the retailer's site.

Target has pledged to spend more than [scripts/homepage/home-dev.php] billion on Black-owned businesses by 2025.

The situation today mirrors that of the 1990s, when some quilters enjoyed newfound visibility, others were disinterested and still others felt taken advantage of. (In 2007, several quilters brought a series of lawsuits against the Arnett family, but all cases were settled out of court and little is known about the suits because of nondisclosure agreements.)

The profit-oriented approach that emerged, which disrupted the Quilting Bee's price-sharing structure, created “real rifts and disharmony within the community,” Turner explains, over engaging with collectors, art institutions and commercial enterprises. “To have those bonds disrupted over the commercialization of their art form, I think, is sad.”

Quilts are made to mark major milestones and are gifted to celebrate a new baby or a marriage, or to honor someone’s loss. Repurposing fabric — from tattered blankets, frayed rags, stained clothes — is a central ethos of the community’s quilting practice, which resists commodification. But the Target collection was mass-produced from new fabrics in factories in China and elsewhere overseas.

The older generations of Gee's Bend quilters are known for one-of-a-kind designs with clashing colors and irregular, wavy lines — visual effects borne of their material constraints. Most worked at night in houses without electricity and didn't have basic tools like scissors, let alone access to fabric stores. Stella Mae Pettway, who has sold her quilts on Etsy for 0 to ,000, has characterized having scissors and access to more fabrics now as a paradox of “advantage and a disadvantage.”

Many third- and fourth-generation artists returned to quilting as adults for a creative and therapeutic outlet, as well as a tether to their roots. After her mom died in 2010, quilter JoeAnn Pettway-West revisited the practice and found peace in completing her mother’s unfinished quilts. “As I’m making this stitch, I can just see her hand, stitching. It’s like, we’re there together,” she says. “It's a little bit of her, a little bit of me.”

Delia Pettway Thibodeaux is a third-generation Gee’s Bend quilter whose grandmother was a sharecropper and whose bold, rhythmic quilts are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection. For the Target collection, she received a flat fee rather than a rate proportional to sales.

“I was kind of concerned in the beginning” about how quilts would be altered to fit with the collection, Pettway Thibodeaux says. “But then again when I saw the collection, I felt different.”

Claudia Pettway Charley, a Gee’s Bend quilter and a community manager at Nest, a nonprofit, said in an emailed statement that the collaboration was “a great way to make our designs accessible” to a wide audience.

“We had no idea how large this campaign would be and what it would mean to our community,” she said.

Because job opportunities are so limited in Gee's Bend, many fourth-generation quilters have left the area to take jobs as teachers, day care workers, home health aides, and to serve in the military.

“We, as the next generation, we was more dreamers,” Pettway-West says.

National recognition has certainly brought some positive change. But more visibility — from museum exhibitions, academic research, a U.S. Postal Service stamp collection — hasn't necessarily translated into economic gains. After all, the average annual income in Boykin, Alabama, is still far below the poverty rate at about ,000, according to the nonprofit Nest.

“This is a community that still, to this day, really needs recognition, still needs economic revitalization," says Lauren Cross, Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Huntington Museum of Art. "And so any economic opportunities that, you know, funnel back to them, I support."

Target’s line in particular, though, is disconnected from the group’s origins and handmade practice, she says. It's a problem that distills the very challenge at hand when something handcrafted and linked to deep tradition goes national and corporate.

“On one hand you want to preserve the stories and that sense of authenticity," Cross says.

"And on the other hand," she asks, “how do you reach a broader audience?”

Historically, when students at American universities and colleges protest — from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter — there's a common refrain that “outside agitators” are to blame. College administrators and elected officials have often pointed to community members joining protests to dismiss the demands of student protesters.

Experts say it's a convenient way for officials to delegitimize the motivations of some political movements and justify calling in law enforcement to stop direct actions that are largely nonviolent and engaging in constitutionally protected speech.

“This tactic shifts focus away from genuine grievances and portray radical movements as orchestrated by opportunistic outsiders," said Shanelle Matthews, a professor of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies at the City University of New York and a former communications director for the Movement for Black Lives.

Over the last few weeks, students on campuses across the country have built encampments, occupied buildings and led protests to call on colleges and universities to divest their endowments from companies profiting from the Israel-Hamas war. Several college and city leaders have pointed to the threat of outsiders when describing the protests — and some have responded by cancelling or shifting plans for commencement ceremonies.

Here's what to know about the phrase “outside agitators” used during historic student movements.

Protest movements are typically comprised of local community members and organizers from other parts of the state or country that work together toward a common goal. In the 1960s, state and local officials often focused on this hallmark of community organizing and suggested that civil rights protests were organized by people outside of a given community.

In 1960, a group of Black college students took out a full page ad in Atlanta newspapers called “An Appeal for Human Rights” that expressed solidarity with students everywhere protesting for civil rights. Segregationist politician and then-Georgia Gov. Ernest Vandiver suggested it was created by foreigners and called it a calculated attempt “to breed dissatisfaction, discontent, discord and evil."

“It did not sound like it was prepared in any Georgia school or college; nor in fact did it read like it was written even in this country,” he told the press.

The idea that outside agitators were involved in civil rights protests became so common that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the label in his letter from the Birmingham Jail in 1963.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

Former President Richard Nixon hoped to tie the 1970 shooting deaths of Kent State students by the National Guard to outside agitators, but the FBI was unable to provide such a link. The students had been protesting the Vietnam War.

During the Civil Rights Movement, the label was used as a weapon against community members who spoke up or provided support to protesters and organizers, said Dylan C. Penningroth, an author and historian who teaches law and history at the University of California, Berkeley.

“It delegitimizes internal dissent against the status quo. So anyone who speaks up against the status quo, whatever that is, is by definition an outsider,” he said.

It also ignores the fact that local civil rights organizers often take cues from other protest movements, Penningroth said, and building solidarity with others around the country is often an important part of enacting change.

Nearly a half-century later, the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked widespread protests against police brutality.

Again, outside agitators were frequently invoked and blamed for destruction, looting and the burning of buildings.

The same language was used to describe protests in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, which resulted in over 10,000 arrests nationwide.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz suggested that 80% of those who participated in the unrest that followed in Minneapolis were from out of state. But an Associated Press analysis found that 41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.

The number of people arrested in connection with protests on college and university campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza has now topped 2,800. The Associated Press has tallied at least 70 incidents on at 54 schools since the protests began at Columbia on April 18.

Official have used outside agitator rhetoric in a handful of examples nationwide. After dozens of students were arrested in May 4 demonstrations at the University of Virginia, a top law enforcement official suggested outsiders had “bull horns to direct the protesters on how to flank our officers.”

“We’re receiving intelligence that outside agitators are starting to get involved in these campus protests,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News on May 6.

In anti-war protests on campuses at Atlanta’s Emory University, Boston’s Northeastern University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, school officials and law enforcement have made inaccurate claims about the presence of non-students.

On April 30, New York City police officers in riot gear entered Columbia University’s campus and cleared an encampment, arresting more than 100 people. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly cited the presence of “outside agitators” to justify the use of police force.

“There is a movement to radicalize young people and I’m not going to wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it,” Adams said at a May 1 news conference.

Pressed for specifics, though, the mayor and police officials have had little to say. Adams has repeatedly said that he decided police intervention was necessary in Columbia’s demonstrations after learning that the husband of one “agitator” was “arrested for federal terrorism.”

But the woman referenced by the mayor wasn’t on Columbia’s campus that week, isn’t among the protesters who were arrested and has not been accused of any crime.

Nahla Al-Arian told The Associated Press she was visiting the city last month and briefly stopped by the campus to see the protest encampment. She also said Adams was mischaracterizing the facts about her husband, a former computer engineering professor who was charged two decades ago with giving illegal support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the 1980s and 1990s.

Students involved in the Columbia protests have told The AP it is true that some people not affiliated with the university have been on campus and played an active role in the demonstrations, but they have vehemently denied that those allies were leading or “radicalizing” the students.

“While it's true that people with nefarious intentions crash protests, it's the exception rather than the rule,” Matthews said. “Given that, people should be wary of this narrative.”

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AP writers R.J. Rico in Atlanta, Steve LeBlanc in Boston, David B. Caruso in New York and Jim Vertuno in Austin contributed.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) — Minnesota officially unfurled its new state flag atop the capitol for the first time Saturday on statehood day.

The new flag and accompanying state seal were adopted to replace an old design that Native Americans said reminded them of painful memories of conquest and displacement.

The new symbols eliminate an old state seal that featured the image of a Native American riding off into the sunset while a white settler plows his field with a rifle at the ready. The seal was a key feature of the old flag. That's why there was pressure to change both.

Officials didn't pick any of the most popular designs submitted online that included options like a loon — the state bird — with lasers for eyes.

Instead, the new design adopted in December features a dark blue shape resembling Minnesota on the left, with a white, eight-pointed North Star on it. On the right is a light blue field that to those involved in the selection process symbolizes the abundant waters that help define the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

The new state seal features a loon amid wild rice.

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — The families of five Hawaii men who served in a unit of Japanese-language linguists during World War II received posthumous Purple Heart medals on behalf of their loved ones on Friday, nearly eight decades after the soldiers died in a plane crash in the final days of the conflict.

“I don’t have words. I’m just overwhelmed,” Wilfred Ikemoto said as he choked up while speaking of the belated honor given to his older brother Haruyuki.

The older Ikemoto was among 31 men killed when their C-46 transport plane hit a cliff while attempting to land in Okinawa, Japan, on Aug. 13, 1945.

“I’m just happy that he got recognized,” Ikemoto said.

Army records indicate only two of the 31 ever received Purple Heart medals, which the military awards to those wounded or killed during action against an enemy.

Researchers in Hawaii and Minnesota recently discovered the omission, leading the Army to agree to issue medals to families of the 29 men who were never recognized. Researchers located families of the five from Hawaii, and now the Army is asking family members of the other 24 men to contact them so their loved ones can finally receive recognition.

The older Ikemoto was the fourth of 10 children and the first in his family to attend college when he enrolled at the University of Hawaii. He was a photographer and developed film in a makeshift darkroom in a bedroom at home.

“I remember him as probably the smartest and most talented in our family,” said Wilfred Ikemoto, who was 10 years old when his brother died.

On board the plane were 12 paratroopers with the 11th Airborne Division, five soldiers in a Counter-intelligence Detachment assigned to the paratroopers, 10 Japanese American linguists in the Military Intelligence Service and four crew members.

They had all flown up from the Philippines to spearhead the occupation of Japan after Tokyo's surrender, said Daniel Matthews, who looked into the ill-fated flight while researching his father's postwar service in the 11th Airborne.

Matthews attributed the Army's failure to recognize all 31 soldiers with medals to administrative oversight in the waning hours of the war. The U.S. had been preparing to invade Japan’s main islands, but it formulated alternative plans after receiving indications Japan was getting ready to surrender. Complicating matters further, there were four different units on the plane.

Wilfred Motokane Jr. said he had mixed feelings after he accepted his father's medal.

“I’m very happy that we’re finally recognizing some people,” he said. “I think it took a long time for it to happen. That’s the one part that I don’t feel that good about, if you will.”

The Hawaii five were all part of the Military Intelligence Service or MIS, a U.S. Army unit made up of mostly Japanese Americans who interrogated prisoners, translated intercepted messages and traveled behind enemy lines to gather intelligence.

They five had been inducted in January 1944 after the MIS, desperate to get more recruits, sent a team to Hawaii to find more linguists, historian Mark Matsunaga said.

Altogether some 6,000 served with the Military Intelligence Service. But much of their work has remained relatively unknown because it was classified until the 1970s.

During the U.S. occupation of Japan, they served crucial roles as liaisons between American and Japanese officials and overseeing regional governments.

Retired Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who recently stepped down as head of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, presented the medals to the families during the ceremony on the banks of Pearl Harbor. Nakasone's Hawaii-born father served in the MIS after the war, giving him a personal connection to the event.

“What these Military Intelligence Service soldiers brought to the occupation of Japan was an understanding of culture that could take what was the vanquished to work with the victor,” Nakasone said. “I’m very proud of all the MIS soldiers not only during combat, but also during the occupation.”

FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) — Mona Hardin has been waiting five long years for any resolution to the federal investigation into her son’s deadly arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, an anguish only compounded by the fact that nearly every other major civil rights case during that time has passed her by.

It took just months for Tyre Nichols ’ beating death last year to result in federal charges against five Memphis police officers. A half-dozen white lawmen in Mississippi have been federally sentenced in last year's torture of two Black suspects. And federal prosecutors long ago brought swift charges in the slayings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.

Every one of those cases happened months or years after the death of Ronald Greene in northern Louisiana on May 10, 2019, which sparked national outrage after The Associated Press published long-suppressed body-camera video showing white troopers converging on the Black motorist before stunning, beating and dragging him as he wailed, “I’m scared!”

Yet half a decade after Greene’s violent death, the federal investigation remains open and unresolved with no end in sight. And Hardin says she feels ghosted and forgotten by a Justice Department that no longer even returns her calls.

“Where’s Ronald Greene’s justice?” asked Hardin, who refuses to bury her son's cremated remains until she gets some measure of accountability. “I still have my boy in that urn, and that hurts me more than anything. We haven’t grieved the loss of Ronnie because we’ve been in battle.”

Justice Department spokesperson Aryele Bradford said the investigation remains ongoing and declined to provide further details.

Under federal law, no statute of limitations applies to potential civil rights charges in the case because Greene’s arrest was fatal. But prosecutors have wavered for years on whether to bring an indictment, having all but assured Greene’s family initially that an exhaustive FBI investigation would produce charges of some kind.

A federal prosecution seemed so imminent in 2022 that one state police supervisor told AP he expected to be indicted. The FBI had shifted its focus in those days from the troopers who left Greene handcuffed and facedown for more than nine minutes to state police brass suspected of obstructing justice by suppressing video evidence, quashing a detective’s recommendation to arrest a trooper and pressuring a state prosecutor.

All the while, federal prosecutors asked local District Attorney John Belton to hold off on bringing state charges until the federal investigation was complete. They later reversed course, and in late 2022 a state grand jury indicted five officers on counts ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance. Charges remain against only two, with a trial scheduled for later this year for a senior trooper seen on video dragging Greene facedown by his ankle shackles.

State police initially blamed the 49-year-old's death north of Monroe on a crash following a high-speed chase over a traffic violation. But that explanation was called into question by photos of Greene’s body on a gurney showing his bruised and battered face, a hospital report noting he had two stun gun prongs in his back and the fact that his SUV had only minor damage. Even the emergency room doctor questioned the troopers’ initial account of a crash, writing in his notes: “Does not add up.”

All that changed two years later when AP published graphic body-camera video of Greene’s final moments, showing him being swarmed by troopers even as he appeared to raise his hands, plead for mercy and wail, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” Troopers repeatedly jolted Greene with stun guns before he could even get out of the car, with one of them wrestling him to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face, Another called him a “stupid motherf---—.” They then ordered a shackled Greene to remain facedown on the ground, even as he struggled to prop himself up on his side.

A reexamined autopsy ordered by the FBI ultimately debunked the crash narrative and listed “prone restraint” among other contributing factors in Greene’s death, including neck compression, physical struggle and cocaine use.

Greene’s family members weren’t the only ones baffled by the pace of the federal inquiry. Then-Gov. John Bel Edwards expressed private frustration with the lack of answers in a closed-door meeting with state lawmakers, saying he believed from the first time he saw the video, in late 2020, that Greene’s treatment was criminal and racist.

“Are they ever going to come out and have a charge?” the Democratic governor asked amid reporting by AP that he had been notified within hours of Greene’s death that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle.”

“This was a cover-up of the highest order,” Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP’s Louisiana state conference, told sign-toting demonstrators Friday outside the Union Parish Courthouse in Farmerville.

“Why call the police when they’re the very ones that might kill you?" McClanahan said. "It was Ronald Greene then but it’s been a whole lot since Ronald Greene. Enough is enough.”

Perhaps the most significant hurdle to federal charges was the untimely death of Chris Hollingsworth, the trooper who was seen on the video repeatedly bashing Greene in the head with a flashlight and was later recorded by his own body camera calling a fellow officer and saying, “I beat the ever-living f--- out of him.” Hollingsworth died in a high-speed, single-vehicle crash in 2020 hours after he was told he would be fired over his actions in Greene’s death.

Another major sticking point has been whether prosecutors could prove the troopers acted “willfully” in abusing Greene — a key component of civil rights charges that has complicated such prosecutions around the country. The FBI even enhanced the video of the arrest in an ultimately inconclusive attempt to determine whether he had been pepper-sprayed after he was in custody, focusing on an exchange in which a deputy jeeringly said, “S--- hurts, doesn’t it?”

The Justice Department has also been conducting a sweeping investigation into use of force by the Louisiana State Police and whether it engages in “ racially discriminatory policing.” The department began that “pattern-or-practice” inquiry nearly two years ago following an AP investigation that found Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases in which troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct.

Also still pending is the federal wrongful death lawsuit Greene’s family filed four years ago seeking damages from the officers, who have denied wrongdoing. The civil case has been put on hold as the criminal proceedings play out.

Hardin said it's long past time for the state of Louisiana to make amends.

“It started with a lie — we were told Ronnie was killed in a car crash,” she said. “That was wrong, and it has to be addressed. I will go to my grave knowing I did everything I could to get justice for Ronnie.”

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Friday that U.S. history shows c ourt decisions unpopular in their time later can become part of the “fabric of American constitutional law.”

Kavanaugh spoke Friday at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and is one of the most conservative circuits.

In a question-and-answer session, he was not asked about any of the current court's nationally divisive rulings, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade federal abortion protections in 2022 that has become a key political issue in elections across the country this year. He was part of the conservative majority in that ruling.

However, he was asked how judges and the courts can help boost public confidence in the judiciary.

In his answer, Kavanaugh said some high court decisions from the 1950s and '60s on monumental issues spanning civil and criminal rights, free speech and school prayer — including the iconic Brown v. Board of Education case that ended legal segregation in public schools — were unpopular when they were issued.

“The Warren court was no picnic for the justices. … They were unpopular basically from start to finish from ’53 to ’69,” Kavanaugh said. “What the court kept doing is playing itself, sticking to its principles. And you know, look, a lot of those decisions (were) unpopular, and a lot of them are landmarks now that we accept as parts of the fabric of America, and the fabric of American constitutional law.”

He said federal judges “stay as far away from politics as possible.”

“It’s an everyday thing. I don’t think it’s a ‘flip the switch.’ It’s showing up every day in the courtroom and trying to be respectful of the parties in a way that is clear and understandable," he said.

Kavanaugh was asked about his personal security, which he said protects his family 24 hours a day, and about protesters that have shown up at his house. In 2022, a man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested at the justice's house in Maryland.

When asked if protesters still show up, Kavanaugh said, “Depends on the day. ... Not as much. I think I'll leave it there,."

Kavanaugh's daughters were in seventh and fifth grade when he was confirmed in 2018 and are now in high school.

“They have grown up understanding what it means and ride in the car, and at the basketball games pick out the security guy in the stands. Hopefully, you know, you pray that it’s not a long-term impact on them,” he said.